There are rooms where Randy Edelman plays for thousands, and there are rooms where he plays for twelve. The second kind may tell you more about him. For his return to The Al Lambert Show, the composer and pianist will sit down at a freshly tuned Steinway inside the Hilton Garden Inn Staten Island, with host Al Lambert and co-host Laura Lambert beside him and an invited audience of about a dozen people close enough to watch his hands.
It is a small setting by design. The Al Lambert Show has long been a fixture of Staten Island Community Television, a program built on conversation and live performance, and its tapings carry the feel of a living room that happens to have cameras in it. The dress code is upper casual, a sport jacket worn loosely, and the mood matches. Edelman has been here before, and he knows how the room works.
That intimacy suits him. Edelman performs solo piano only. There is no band behind him, no orchestra, no backing musicians of any kind, just the instrument and the stories that come with the songs. For an artist whose music has filled some of the largest screens in the world, the scale is a deliberate choice. It strips the work back to what it was when he first wrote it: a melody under his fingers.
The catalog he draws from is a deep one. Edelman’s score for The Last of the Mohicans earned him a Golden Globe nomination, and his film work also includes Gettysburg, Dragonheart, Kindergarten Cop, Twins, My Cousin Vinny and The Mask. Television audiences know his theme for MacGyver. As a songwriter he gave Barry Manilow “Weekend in New England,” and his own recordings, among them “Uptown Uptempo Woman,” built a following that has stayed with him for decades.
The piano itself comes with a story. The Steinway has been tuned for the taping courtesy of Richard and Lois Nicotra, the founders of The Nicotra Group and the owners of the Hilton Garden Inn Staten Island and the Hampton Inn & Suites next door. The Nicotras are longtime friends of Al Lambert and among the borough’s best-known developers and philanthropists, and they are expected to stop in to say hello to Edelman and the guests.
The Staten Island visit lands in the middle of a full season. Edelman’s new album, Green Park, has just arrived on Cherry Red Records. He plays the Triad Theatre in Manhattan on October 2 and 3. And on December 19 he returns to Carnegie Hall with “American Original,” a solo piano performance that marks his third appearance at the hall.
Between a theater run and one of the most storied stages in the country, a session at a piano in front of twelve people might look like a detour. For Edelman it is closer to the center of things. The film scores, the hit songs and the concert halls all began the same way, with one man at a keyboard and somebody listening. On The Al Lambert Show, that is the whole show.